I have not been the only one saying it; synthetic human growth hormone (hGH) does not work.

The evidence keeps piling up to show that everybody has been duped by the ‘black’ marketing scam of the past few decades. The sham operators, the drug peddlars, the slick marketers, the anti-ageing quacks and even celebrities such as Rocky promoting its use have all conspired to influence athletes and the vain that hGH is performance enhancing and anti-ageing. The only winners in this massive swindle have been the swindlers themselves

The scam of the last 20 years has fooled almost everyone. For those who cheat and thought it would help build muscle strength and power, many of them got nothing more than diabetes, dicky hearts and suspicious bone growth especially around the jaw and skull. Dental braces in adult athletes have been a dead giveaway.

'It's predictable that cheats will now be scamming to get their hands on the animal versions of GH to avoid detection'


The hGH industry which had rudimentary beginnings involving the extraction of GH from corpses was transformed in the 1980s when hGH was first synthesised. Since then there has been an explosion in its use and not all of it for medical reasons. There is no way that pharmaceutical manufacturers could be making all of the excess GH.

In this day and age of excess, there is little justification for prescribing hGH, apart from the few legitimate GH deficient cases) and growth-deficient children of the third world certainly do not need GH, they just need food. So who is making the stuff and who is using it all? Part of the answer has just appeared with Operation Raw Deal (ORD) uncovering a worldwide web of steroid and hGH manufacturing and distribution networks emanating out of China with links to many other countries.

This excess and/or counterfeit hGH was heading for the doping market. While it's early days in the ORD investigations, in a report to the WADA in March of this year, Sandro Donati estimated that the global sales of hGH exceeded some $2billion, of which about $600million (or 30%) was consumed for doping purposes. Sandro was not far off the mark, it appears, as estimates of proceeds from ORD are of the same magnitude. In all likelihood the millions of users of hGH are probably using steroids as well, again reinforcing the myth that hGH works.

Now, more than 170 studies involving administration of synthetic hGH have showed that hGH had neither strengthening or performance-enhancing effects ie. It does not work. Two recent and well-controlled studies have added weight to previous studies. Researchers from the Garvan Institute in Sydney have concluded that GH at least in the way it is currently used or abused does not build muscle or improve performance. Rather it helps to maintain water, giving muscles a smooth, buffed appearance and the illusion that there is more muscle. This ‘perception’ that muscles are bigger has had a physical and/or pyschological reinforcing affect.

The same researchers did find, though, that when hGH was used in combination with steroids it did build muscle and improve performance ie. GH worked by proxy. But how much was due to steroids and how much was due to GH was unknown.

In the most recent study, Dr Christer Erhnborg also found that hGH did not build muscle or improve performance. Dr Erhnborg stated that ‘'anyone who injects growth hormone with the intention of gaining muscle mass and improving performance should think again'’. In his study of well-trained people in Goteberg, 20 were injected with large doses of hGH each day for a month, while another 10 believed  they also were receiving hGH received harmless saline solution instead. Tests on the subjects of physical performance on an exercise cycle showed that those receiving hGH did not perform better than those receiving saline solution.

At best, synthetic hGH will only work when injected; the pills you buy over the Internet are useless. Once you pop hGH pills it has to be able to escape digestion in the gut and enter into the bloodstream to work anyway. The concentration of these hGH pills is usually very low (if they have any hGH in them at all) so by the time it's got into the blood stream it has probably all gone. All you are left with is expensive urine.

Now with a test for human GH imminent it's predictable that cheats will now be scamming to get their hands on the animal versions of GH to avoid detection. The problem with using animal versions of GH, though, is that apart from not working (the human version doesn’t), if the body recognises it as ‘foreign’, there is a risk that the body could not only destroy the animal GH but eventually turn on its very own GH and destroy it as well. The cheats run the risk of shrinking before our very eyes without any capacity to produce natural GH.

While a test is welcomed and will discourage use, it will also embolden those with inherent risky behaviour to seek ever-more dangerous ways to get the same effect. Animal steroids and GH may be used to circumvent a human GH test but they undoubtedly will also produce some nasty and unforeseen side-effects.

Scientific evidence or lack of it aside, what has been more alarming is that the great hGH hoax has led sporting authorities to believe that hGH works and therefore should be on the banned list because of that. What has further compounded the mystique of hGH is that if the authorities test for hGH, then the athletes' reaction has been that if they test for it then it must work, otherwise why would they bother; a vicious cycle has developed over the decades feeding the myths, half-truths and downright lies about GH.

Worse still, authorities like the WADA have invested millions in developing a GH test, the Australian government likewise and recently Major League Baseball siphoned $500K to anti-doping guru Don Catlin to come up with a urine based test for hGH because ‘wimpy’ baseballers were not keen on the idea of being blood-tested. A stalling tactic if there ever was one. The chances of a urine test are virtually zero, but in saying that no one should ever under-estimate the capabilities of Catlin. He may surprise us all, none the least MLB officials.

While the efforts to create a test are well intentioned, the mounting evidence that hGH does not work suggests that the quest for the ‘holy grail’ of doping tests has been a pointless and very expensive exercise. While the latest research corroborates dozens of previous studies the Garvan Institute study may justify the existence of a GH test after-all because of synergistic effect of GH when used in tandem with steroids. But this raises an interesting dilemma. If GH on its own does not improve performance, is there a case perhaps that it should be removed from the banned list. Or does it mean that a positive GH test must be accompanied by a positive steroid test to be prosecuted successfully?

Whether hGH is performance-enhancing or not, I believe it should be banned if only because it is dangerous to health and certainly against the spirit of sport. Anyway, why should any normal healthy athlete be taking a prescribed drug; what would be the supposed disease or illness being treated? I’d like to see a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE) for this drug.

While synthetic hGH does not work, what does work is the injection of hGH ‘genes’ to programme normal muscles to morph into hulk-like muscles. The strongest and arguably the most disturbing sign that hGH gene therapy will work has undoubtedly been the creation of the ‘Schwarzenegger’ mice by a team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. It appears the jury is in though that hGH in its current form and usage patterns does not work.

The hGH anti-doping tests being proposed and developed may not be in vain after all but it is unknown whether the same markers being proposed for a blood test such as IGF-1 will be affected when the gene is actually introduced into the body to produce more muscle (although raised levels of GH and IGF-1 in blood have been detected in mice injected with extra GH genetic material).

At the moment there is no known ‘official’ human trial that proposes to inject extra hGH genes to see what happens in the blood (or in the body). In fact, I would be surprised if there ever is such a trial, (an official one anyway) because of the ethics and possible side effects - but I’d bet my house there wouldn’t be too much trouble lining up athletes to be the first ‘guinea pigs’. It will take something a bit more sophisticated, though, to detect gene doping and gene ’maps’ of over- or under-expressed genes associated with natural hGH production in the body may be the way to go.

Until now the benefits of using synthetic hGH has been one big hoax, but this is sure to change when hGH doping goes genetic.

Do you agree with Robin Parisotto's assessment? Leave your comments below.